


Nightmares

by battle_cat



Series: Together [8]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Comfort Sex, Cunnilingus, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Furiosa is the most eaten out character in fandom history, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wasteland coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 00:15:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5890636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I could, ahh, do something to help you relax," he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares

She has nightmares.

He does, too. But in the relative calm of the new Citadel, they don’t grip him so tightly. He talks more and flinches less and sleeps beside her at night, and the shadows at the edges of his vision never leave completely but they quiet some.

But hers get worse. As if the constant vigilance Joe’s world required had been the bulwark holding back all her demons, and a bit of peace and safety has cracked it.

She’s rarely slept easy at the Citadel, but now she wakes two, three, five times a night, sweating and gasping, heart racing from a past terror real or imagined.

He learns after too many punches and head-butts not to touch her when she first wakes. When she comes back to herself he tries to soothe, holding her close and stroking her back and letting her match the rhythm of her breath to the rising and falling of his chest. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes not.

 

When she jolts awake for the fourth time that night she wants to scream. Because she is exhausted and on edge and it’s not fucking _fair_ ; she killed him; he shouldn’t be able to reach her still. But when has the universe ever been fair?

“Hey.” Max shifts in the bed next to her, and there’s just enough moonlight to make out the planes of his face. He always wakes when she does, and she hates that too. It makes her burn, that her ghosts can disturb them both, and it makes her ache, that he has never, not once, accepted her offers of another place to sleep.

Now he brushes a soft hand against her cheek, slides close and folds her up in his arms, and she’s shocked to hear the broken little sound that escapes her.

“It’s never getting better,” she mumbles against his neck.

“Mm.” He shifts so he can look her in the eye, rub his thumb against the wrinkles in her forehead and press a soft kiss there. “Don’t know that.”

And because she doesn’t know what else to do, she lets him pull her back against him until she stops trembling. His bare chest is warm and solid, and she likes the feeling of his hand rubbing slow swoops across her back over her shirt.

She hadn’t thought of it as a thing she was missing, being touched soft and kind like this, but it’s so nice, just the feeling of his hands stroking, that sometimes it makes her want to cry.

She makes a soft encouraging noise when his hand slides under her shirt and continues the same motion, rough calloused fingers warm against her skin. The shaking has stopped, but she’s still twitchy from the surge of nightmare adrenaline, and underneath it is the familiar baseline ache of sleep deprivation.

“Just want to sleep,” she sighs.

“I could, ahh, do something to help you relax.” He licks his lips and—oh. He’s talking about sex.

It isn’t _that_ new a thing, but she is still learning what her body responds to, mapping out the territory, not just _No_ and _Careful_ and _Slow_ but also _I like that_ and _I want that_ and _Do that again_. But she likes what he does to her, with his hands and his cock and his stupidly soft mouth, and she does always feel relaxed and sleepy after an orgasm or three.

He’s looking at her with raised eyebrows, a question, and she gives him a twitch of a smile and a small nod in answer.

The hand on her back shifts to a light scratch of nails across her skin. It’s such a minor change, but the sensation makes her shiver.

He moves slightly so he can kiss her, soft and slow with just a hint of tongue, and, _oh_ , she wants that tongue between her legs; just the thought of it is enough to make her hips rock.

He’s teasing her as if he knows it, too, mouthing at her earlobe and then slowly down her neck. “What do you want?” he asks when he reaches her collarbone.

“Want your mouth on me,” she breathes, and he makes a noise like he wants it just as much.

“Mm. Between your legs, licking until you come?” He’s tracing his tongue over the skin of her shoulder, and gods, it’s absurd, really, how easily he can rev her up once they get going.

“Yes, please.” He scrapes at her skin with his teeth and she whimpers.

He takes his goddamn time, sliding her shirt up to suck her nipples into hard peaks and slicking a wet trail down her stomach, until she squirms and tries to shove his head down where she wants it. He nips at the flesh of her lower belly in retaliation.

She’s already wet when she wriggles out of her shorts and spreads her legs so he can slide between them, and then for a minute he just catches her gaze and _stares_ , the scratch of his beard nestled against the inside of her thigh.

She’s seen men look at her with awe, or with terror, or with the kind of possessive lust that has her reaching for a weapon, but never the way he does, like he still can’t quite understand how he’s earned her trust, but would do anything to keep it.

“You’re so—” he begins, but then apparently can’t find the word he wants.

“What?” It comes out as a challenge, if only because she doesn’t know what to _do_ with the way she feels when he looks at her like that.

For some reason that makes him smile. And then he ducks his head down and his hot mouth is on her clit all at once, and she moans louder than she intended.

He builds her up slowly, his tongue finding the spots that send delicious shocks of pleasure through her, keeping her on the edge until she makes strange whimpering sounds, and then pushing her over it once, twice, and then a third time with two of his fingers curling and pressing hard inside her until she’s a twitching, gasping mess.

His face is a mess too when he comes up, and there’s something weirdly hot about kissing him and getting her own juices smeared on her chin from his beard and then having him lick them off, and before she knows it she’s pushing him onto his back and climbing on top.

She knows by now that he doesn’t expect her to fuck him every time he makes her come, but she wants to, and she’s so wet his cock slides in easily, and she lets him pull her close and rock his hips up into her.

It’s another thing she never thought she would like, the feeling of someone thrusting inside her, but she does. She doesn’t expect to come again, but then his thumb finds her oversensitive clit and presses down and it’s a little bit raw but she can feel everything building back up again. When she does come it’s a jagged hot rush sparking up and down her spine and her muscles clench down around him hard enough to make him whine. She’s still shivering with aftershocks when she feels him spill inside her.

When she can feel something other than the reverberating waves of pleasure, she realizes there are tears on her cheeks. She swipes them away hastily, but he notices.

“Sorry,” she whispers. “Dunno why—”

“S’okay.” He curls a hand around the back of her skull and eases her down to lie against his chest, and she’s too spent to move anyway, so she lets him.

She falls asleep a sweaty, sticky mess on top of him. When she wakes up next, morning light is streaming in the window.

**Author's Note:**

> There are two [little](http://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/post/138625126630/for-the-ask-meme-pov) [ficlets](http://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/post/138633004355/pov) written for an ask meme on my blog that go along with this, both from Max's POV.


End file.
